Letter 1021: I recognize that every day of my life leaves me indebted to the duty of service, but all the more so on the present...

Avitus the bishop to the lord Sigismund. In every season of my life I acknowledge that I have been made a debtor in the duty of paying my respects, but the more pressingly so at the present festival, which occupies your earnest care no less in scrutinizing the schemings of the heretics than in celebrating the rites of our own party. Indeed, since through a certain yearly contagion the adversaries are gathered together, you must take vigilant pains that it not sprout up again through the deceit of someone else's cunning. This, in the name of God, your victory has already cut down by its celebrated valor, and although Christ be favorable, it withdraws while you are present. Hence that band at Geneva, more ancient than the present anxiety, which after the manner of its first origin hissed the serpent's venom into manly minds by the sibilation of womanish speech. Whence, if I am worthy of it, I desire to know as soon as possible whether, in the presence of the lord your father, by his clemency, any mention has been made of that ordination which let in the plague of the Bonosiacs, roused up from the infernal hiding places, while the Catholics and the Arians contended; or whether there is still preserved the grief of that credulity, or rather of that dissimulation, which a written promise gradually recalls into the ancient credulity of its own doctrine, since it was not stamped upon their minds but inscribed on little scraps of paper. For if indeed this is still, as it had begun, mingled into the communion of the Arian fellowship, then our triumph shines forth the more gloriously under your sovereignty, since, with two heresies reduced into one, while we are gaining no less than we are convicting, both the number of the schismatics decreases and the number of the schisms. Therefore look favorably upon this service of my curiosity, and hasten to meet our expectation concerning the feast of the apostle who is your special patron, and double the gifts of your address to us.

Avitus episcopus domno Sigismundo. Omni quidem vitae meae tempore debitorem me offerendi officii factum agnosco, sed impensius festivitate praesenti, quae sollicitudinem vestram non minus explorandis haereticorum conatibus quam nostrae partis occupat cultibus celebrandis. Si quidem per annuum quoddam contagium congregatis adversis attento vobis labore curandum est, ne alienae calliditatis fraude pullulet. quod in dei nomine iam vestra victoria celebrabili virtute succidit, quamlibet Christo propitio praesentibus vobis absistat. Hinc illa sollicitudine priscior constipatio Genavensis, quae in morem originis primae virilibus animis virus anguis sibilo feminei sermonis insonuit. Vnde illud, si mereor, quamprimum scire desidero, utrum in domno clementiae vestrae patre mentio illius ordinationis acciderit, quae Bonosiacorum pestem ab infernalibus latebris excitatam catholicis Arrianisque certantibus intromisit; vel si servatur adhuc credulitatis, immo simulationis illius dolor, quem non impressum animis, sed chartulis exaratum paulatim in antiquam sui dogmatis credulitatem revocat litterata promissio. Quae certe si adhuc, ut coeperat, societatis Arrianae communioni inmixta est, claret gloriosior sub principatu vestro noster triumphus, cum duabus haeresibus in unam redactis non minus adquiren- tibus quam convincentibus nobis et scismaticorum numerus decrescit et scismatum. Hinc ergo servitium curiositatis meae dignanter adspicite et de peculiaris patroni vestri apostoli festis expectationi nostrae properatis et compellationis vestrae munera duplicate.